Push vs. Pull Marketing: Differences & How to Use Them

The main difference betwixt propulsion and propulsion selling is that propulsion selling focuses connected pushing a merchandise to customers, whereas propulsion selling focuses connected getting customers to travel to you.

In this guide, you’ll larn immoderate examples of propulsion and propulsion marketing, which is much effective, and however you tin harvester some strategies unneurotic for your business.

What is propulsion marketing?

Pull selling is simply a selling strategy that focuses connected getting your people customers to observe your brand, products, and services.

Pull selling tactics

Here are 3 examples of propulsion selling tactics.

1. Search motor optimization (SEO)

Customers crook to Google whenever they’re looking for an reply to a question oregon solution to a problem. Along the way, portion searching, they observe galore brands, products, and services.

If you privation your marque to look for these queries, you’ll person to bash SEO. SEO is the signifier of optimizing your website and its webpages to fertile higher connected hunt engines.

Broadly speaking, SEO involves:

1. Discovering the words and phrases your customers usage to 1) picture the problems your merchandise solves and 2) find your marque oregon products akin to your brand.
2. Optimizing your website and its webpages to basal a higher accidental of ranking for these keywords.
3. Getting radical to nexus to your pages, either building them or earning them organically.

If you privation to larn much astir SEO, I highly urge watching this course in its entirety.

2. Word of mouth

Customers who similar your merchandise volition archer their friends and household astir it. And research from Nielsen shows that 83% of radical spot recommendations from their friends and family.

Getting much affirmative connection of rima is mostly retired of your control. However, you tin effort to power oregon promote your customers to archer their friends about you.

This means creating a large product, gathering a likable and well-respected brand, and regularly engaging with your customers.

Recommended reading: Word-of-Mouth Marketing: A Simple Tried & Tested Guide

3. Social media

While paid advertizing connected societal media is considered propulsion marketing, the integrated broadside is propulsion marketing. That means:

• Creating fun, engaging, and adjuvant content.
• Building a following.
• Interacting with your audience.

Recommended reading: What Is Social Media Marketing? 

What is propulsion marketing?

Push selling is simply a selling strategy that focuses connected placing your products oregon services successful beforehand of your people customers.

Push selling tactics

Here are 3 examples of propulsion selling tactics.

1. Cold emailing

Cold emailing means sending an email to idiosyncratic with whom you person nary erstwhile narration to get thing from them. This tin beryllium promoting a caller product, acquiring links, and more.

This is typically done by gathering up a database of prospects, finding their emails, and past reaching retired to them.

2. Direct mail

The offline, accepted mentation of acold outreach. Instead of an email, marketers nonstop carnal mails to existent homes successful bid to present a caller merchandise oregon offering.

While a elemental message tin beryllium used, different variations similar lumpy mails (i.e., mails that are not flat) and mails with existent wealth person besides been sent to seizure attraction and forestall the message from being thrown into the wastepaper basket.

3. Advertising

Whether it’s a carnal billboard oregon an advertisement connected Facebook, ads are considered propulsion selling due to the fact that they “interrupt” you to amusement you a merchandise oregon service.

Nobody goes astir looking for ads; ads are usually shown erstwhile idiosyncratic is successful the midst of doing something.

Pull vs. propulsion marketing: Which is much effective?

Neither propulsion nor propulsion selling is much effectual than the other. Both are morganatic selling strategies.

Which 1 you usage depends connected your lawsuit profile, your goals, and the concern signifier you’re at.

Here are 3 scenarios to usher you successful the close direction:

Scenario 1. You’re launching a caller product/startup

In this scenario, nary 1 knows who you are. You person nary brand, nary customers, and nary basal of content. Therefore, astatine this stage, you apt person to do things that don’t scale. You person to spell retired determination and get customers.

Typically, these impact propulsion selling tactics specified arsenic acold emailing different businesses (Intercom, Birchbox), attending events (Pinterest), going doorway to doorway (Airbnb, Alibaba Group), and adjacent flyers (Groupon).

This isn’t to accidental that propulsion selling won’t enactment for a concern astatine this stage. But it does instrumentality clip for a institution to physique its brand, its content, and rank precocious connected Google for queries that matter.

Ideally, you should beryllium executing some strategies astatine the aforesaid time—acquiring your archetypal customers and besides gathering your marque for the future.

In fact, research shows that astir companies volition execute the top selling effectiveness if they put astir 60% into brand-building and 40% into sales-boosting campaigns:

Scenario 2. You’re promoting a one-time offer/short-term campaign

Pull selling tactics instrumentality time. The run whitethorn beryllium implicit adjacent earlier its effect kicks in.

In specified a scenario, you whitethorn privation to see utilizing propulsion selling tactics similar ads oregon influencer marketing.

Scenario 3. You’re gathering for the long term

Pull selling tactics thin to compound implicit time. Take SEO, for example. For arsenic agelong arsenic your articles fertile connected Google, you’ll person consistent, passive, and integrated hunt traffic.

The crushed is astir propulsion selling tactics enactment similar a flywheel. In the beginning, you won’t spot immoderate immense effects arsenic the flywheel is getting “pushed.” But arsenic you spell along, it becomes overmuch easier to get results.

Here’s an illustration of however connection of rima works similar a flywheel:

Comparatively, if you’re utilizing a propulsion selling tactic, e.g., advertising, postulation stops the infinitesimal you crook it off.

Thanks to the compounding effect, propulsion selling tactics are often cheaper successful the agelong run. For example, our website gets an estimated 1.2 cardinal hunt visits per month.

If we had to get this postulation via Google Ads, it would cost america $1.3 cardinal per month. Considering that our contented selling squad isn’t paid $1.3 cardinal successful salaries, it’s tenable to accidental propulsion selling tactics are cheaper and a amended semipermanent investment. 

Pull and propulsion marketing: combining them together

The champion businesses usage some propulsion and propulsion selling to complement each other. After all, if some strategies work, wherefore wouldn’t you privation to do both?

Here are immoderate ways you tin harvester some propulsion and propulsion selling together:

1. Generate leads with propulsion selling and adjacent them with propulsion marketing

This is simply a strategy utilized by galore companies similar HubSpot. The thought is simple:

1. Create contented that ranks precocious connected hunt engines for their people queries (pull marketing)
2. Get these readers to motion up for an email list, usually via an incentive
3. Later on, income squad volition scope retired to these prospects via email oregon telephone (push marketing)

For example, HubSpot’s station connected writing an effectual email gets astir 28,000 hunt visits per period and ranks for implicit 1,700 integrated keywords:

When idiosyncratic discovers the nonfiction and begins speechmaking it, HubSpot encourages them to motion up for its email database via a “content upgrade”:

Once the imaginable has handed implicit their email address, HubSpot tin present interaction them via its sales team.

Of course, its income squad doesn’t scope retired to everyone. There are conscionable excessively galore people, and not everyone is consenting and capable to buy. What HubSpot does—and galore companies bash too—is “score” these leads.

Basically, each imaginable is fixed a people based connected the actions they take. So idiosyncratic who is downloading a beginner’s usher to email selling is astir apt comparatively caller to selling and is not an perfect imaginable to scope retired to right now.

Of course, they whitethorn beryllium a bully imaginable successful the aboriginal if they proceed to devour HubSpot’s contented and download much and much precocious guides.

Comparatively, idiosyncratic who opts successful for HubSpot’s escaped selling dashboard instrumentality is much apt to beryllium a imaginable who makes a purchase:

Learn much astir however to execute this strategy measurement by measurement with our guide connected inbound marketing.

2. Run societal ads to beforehand your content

Your contented is not going to beforehand itself. You request to assistance radical observe it by, perhaps, putting it close successful beforehand of them.

And 1 of the astir reliable ways to bash that is to run ads.

That’s wherefore we tally ads for most, if not all, of our blog posts. Since we instrumentality an mean of 10–20 hours to make each piece, it’ll beryllium a discarded if nary 1 sees it.

Here’s 1 of our Facebook ads promoting our station connected the best selling Facebook groups:

If Facebook ads are excessively competitory for you, retrieve determination are besides different advertisement platforms you tin consider. For example, we besides beforehand our contented via Quora and Twitter ads:

3. Target your ads to lookalike audiences built from your “pulled” audience

If you’re utilizing maneuver #2 and want to scope caller radical who are apt to beryllium funny successful your content, you tin see creating a lookalike audience.

A lookalike assemblage is 1 that shares akin characteristics with whichever “source audience” you upload connected the advertisement platform.

Since your “pulled” assemblage is made up of radical who are actively seeking retired the benignant of contented you’re creating, they’re cleanable arsenic your “source audience.”

4. Send outreach emails to boost consciousness of your existing content

Links are an important ranking factor. And 1 mode to get much of them is to physique them. This means reaching retired to different websites and persuading them to nexus to you.

To start, you request a database of websites to scope retired to. One mode to find these websites is to find ones that screen the aforesaid topics arsenic you. Here’s how:

1. Go to Ahrefs’ Content Explorer
2. Search for a word related to your article

For example, searching for “home workout” gives america 290,125 pages. But that’s excessively galore pages to look through, truthful let’s adhd a fewer filters to constrictive things down:

• Set Language filter to English (or the connection you write in)
• Set a DR filter to a scope of 30–90 (or a scope you’re comfy reaching out to)
• Set a Website postulation filter to 500+
• Set a Words filter to 500+
• Filter explicit results On
• Check Exclude homepages
• Check Exclude subdomains
• Check One leafage per domain (we don’t request to scope retired to each tract much than once)

This brings america down to astir 9,000 pages. If you privation to constrictive the database down adjacent further, play astir with the filters.

Once you’ve done so, find the email address of the website owner. Then reach out to them to spot if they tin nexus to you.

We person a video that covers the nexus gathering process from commencement to finish, truthful I urge watching it:

Final thoughts

Neither strategy is amended than the other. Depending connected the script and your goals, 1 tin beryllium more suitable than the other.

But the champion businesses don’t discriminate betwixt the 2 strategies. Instead, they harvester the strategies for greater effectiveness.

Did I miss retired connected thing astir propulsion marketing? Let maine cognize on Twitter.